Spirit:God is with us if we are with each other and sensitive to his creation.

Life: abundant possibilities producing the opportunity to use what we have instead of lamenting our lack.

Joy: be of good cheer. Nothing happens until we involve ourselves in the process.

Jesonian is not a religion, a belief, a system of worship or a moral code for judging others. It is when we add our lifestyle of effort, mercy and love to what is available.

It transforms entertainment into inspiration, business into creativity, faith into living works, politics into compassion that counts the cost, family into an every-growing inclusion of our brothers and sisters, and relationship into eternal connections.

We are not the bread.

We have not come to be served … but instead, to serve.

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What is he talking about? There are dangerous people in the world who have to be monitored and even confronted in order to maintain a civil society. You cannot initiate a diplomacy of “love” to countries like North Korea and Iran. They will view it as weakness and use it as leverage against you in the next confrontation. You certainly cannot tolerate someone tooling around, asking us to love our enemies. The trouble he will end up making could cost us our freedom and our way of life.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Impractical. If we actually treated other nations and people with the same integrity we bestow upon our own citizens, we would be affording them undue respect, since they don’t have the same morals and guidelines that we offer to our people. It would lead to a demise in nationalism and a lack of pride. What we need to do is continue our practice of giving “most favored nation” status to the cultures that agree with us and are willing to be like us in most ways.

Don’t judge or you will be judged.

Another portion of idealism. If there is no way for us to feel superior in some aspect of our lives, how are we to gain the confidence to be leaders instead of just an elongated trail of followers? A certain amount of pride is necessary to maintain purpose, right? If people are not better than other people, how can we enforce integrity and morality, granting us a universal sense of well-being? It’s not so much that we’re judging people in order to alienate them, but instead, enlightening them to the error of their ways.

You are the salt of the earth.

Once again, it may be nice to present the concept of an even playing field, and even to insist that “all men are created equal,” but when you give too much power to the weaker members of our population, they will use it for an occasion to welcome anarchy. Encouragement is one thing–but to unleash the idea that everyone can become equally spiritual or equally human is to produce a chaotic environment, where “lessers” mingle with “greaters” and we are never able to determine true excellence. It is possible to understand that people are ignorant–without hating them.

The kingdom of God is within you.

If we’re going to teach people that true spirituality spawns from their own inner faith, inner soul and inner emotions, then we are weakening the foundations of organized religion, granting us the civilization of understanding God. After all, statistics show that people prefer a worship experience that is full of liturgy and pre-fabricated messages, which can be spoken by the entire assembly to instill faith and unity. If we allow people to have their own experience with God within themselves, we are eliminating the demand for religion and replacing it with abstract searching. Where would this leave our churches?

As you can see, the basic teachings of Jesus, which he intoned two thousand years ago, still cause the hierarchy of society to tremble–or laugh–depending on their particular mood. Conventional wisdom trembles at the notion of human beings being blessed with the individuality of discovery, without being constrained by ritual and commandments. And it laughs at the respect given to folks by the Nazarene–to be able to find the face of God and righteousness on their own.

Perhaps the progression of years would keep us from publicly humiliating, mutilating and executing Jesus for such actions taken in our American culture. We are beyond such barbarism.

Many years ago, Ben and Josey invited Dollie and me over to partake in a new delicacy they had come up with from their own imaginations. Chicken Groovy.(For those of you born after the invasion of the bell bottom, groovy means something really fine or absolutely sublime.) Continuing my story, Ben and Josey

English: Logo of the Groovy project (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

requested that we bring three pounds of fresh boneless and skinless chicken breasts to the party–and they would do the rest. So I went to the store, picked up the meat and we headed over to their house with our recently deceased, disassembled birds.The evening started out terrific. Music was playing, giddiness was in the air, conversation was rich … when suddenly Ben came out of the kitchen, horror written all over his face, asking Josey where… Well, I forget what was missing. Some sort of spice. It could have been parsley, sage, rosemary or thyme. It became obvious that Josey had forgotten to pick up this particular ingredient at the store. Ben was devastated and informed everyone that the evening was ruined because the meal couldn’t be completed due to the absence of this mystery spice from the East.

That in itself would have been enough “over-wrought” for me, but the failure to acquire the purchase from the grocery store led Ben and Josey into a deep discussion–in front of us–about many of their internal problems. I was fine when they were discussing the poor choice of a couch in the living room. I remained silent when she expressed her displeasure over him leaving the toilet seat up. But when the conversation moved into frustrations about bedroom technique, I decided it was time for me to get to my feet and do something.

So I grabbed the chicken, a salt shaker and headed off to the kitchen, acquired a frying pan and started to make my own evolution of Chicken Groovy. (By this time, honestly, any chicken or food whatsoever would have been groovy.) Ben and Josey were a bit shocked by my presumption but didn’t sense that they would be able to stop my progress, so I cooked up the chicken and we ate it. They were a bit disgruntled because it wasn’t REALLY Chicken Groovy, but we finished the food and left.

I never forgot that night. It amazed me how quickly we went from being contented individuals to completely enraged and argumentative, simply because there was a missing ingredient. There wasn’t even a discussion on how we could improvise with something else. After all, catsup covers a multitude of inadequacies.

The trouble is, when people want things to be perfect, they convince themselves that the key to that perfection is in surrounding themselves with the elements. Big mistake.

In like manner, I was born a twelve-and-a-half pound glob of pink, hairless “homely.” Since then, I have only added poundage to that perplexity. Somewhere along the way, though, I received a calling in my heart to use my talent to try to enrich my own life and touch the borders of the human beings around me. Honestly, I wasn’t visually suited for that, for human beings are notorious for looking on the outward appearance instead of the heart. I had a missing ingredient. But I chose to ignore it. I placed myself in the vulnerable position of being criticized initially for the possibility of being a blessing later.

About ten years ago, my knees and legs started wishing to retire. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) my mind, heart and spirit were not ready to play shuffleboard. So I find myself touring around the country, daily convincing my lower extremities to participate as they reluctantly joined the quest like a grumpy old man complaining about the available choices at a Tex-Mex restaurant.

I have a missing ingredient to being a traveler–my legs don’t work very well. I suppose there are folks who would use that as an excuse, or even as a sign from God, to cease peddaling. I just find it a humorous diversion to a necessary mission. This is why I am of a firm belief that life really boils down to one of two choices:

1. Am I going to wait for all the ingredients to arrive so I can pursue the recipe of my desire and complete it to my own satisfaction?

2. Am I going to ignore the lack of possibilities available to me and try to piece together something that resembles my desires with what has been provided?

Isn’t that it? The first group spends most of their time explaining why they don’t do things; the second group never offers an explanation, even though you might wonder how they have achieved as much as they have, considering the lack.

I guess the question I should have asked Ben and Josey that fateful night was, “Which came first–the chicken or the groovy?” Is the chicken made groovy because you have found a particular gravy to make chicken palatable? Or is the groovy made possible because the chicken, itself, is hard to screw up?

It’s a big question, folks–one we all must answer. Otherwise, we will spend most of our lives on the sidelines with a very good discourse to share about why we never did what we really wanted to do. We can cite family responsibility, minimal funding, health issues, a dearth of breaks, and even insist that perhaps it was never the will of God. But the truth of the matter is, there was some missing ingredient we thought was necessary in order to make our particular goal a reality, and we chose to sit out the contest instead of using what was available.

Here’s my philosophy–I’m going to go ahead and plant, hoping that somebody else comes along and waters, believing in my heart that God will actually get off of His throne and give us some increase.

I will continue to pursue my vision out of stubbornness, willingness, humility and a bit of silliness, if you don’t mind. You more mature folks may wish to wait for the next bus, the next opportunity, the next splitting of the sky or Halley’s Comet, for that matter. But no one lies on his death-bed and says, “Gee whiz, I shouldn’t have tried that …”

Do yourself a favor–once you resolve who you are and who God is and how the two of you are going to get along, go ahead and solve two other questions:

1. What am I going to do today that resembles my dream?

2. How much good cheer am I willing to use when things just refuse to work out the way I planned?

This is the key. It is the way to keep things groovy. Otherwise, you end up just being chicken.

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity